Flight Software Engineer

Do you want to help a small company make a BIG difference in space? Do you take ownership of your job and responsibility for your actions? Then come work for Red Canyon and help us continue our mission of helping humankind reach the stars!

Red Canyon Software is looking for an enthusiastic and creative software engineer to develop spacecraft flight software. We're looking for candidates who can bring exceptional programming skills and experience in embedded software to the team.

The Software Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development of customer satellite flight software. This engineer will be involved in the full lifecycle of flight software development, from requirements definition through operations. However, because we are a small team where each person takes on many roles, this engineer will also contribute to mission concept development, in-house modeling and simulation capabilities, and proposal writing. Being at the cutting edge of space technology, we need someone who is eager to learn, grow, and take on new and potentially unfamiliar challenges. There is no shortage of fascinating problems to solve.

The Senior Software Engineer will provide autonomous support of complex assignments, under the leadership of the Software Engineering Manager. The Senior Software Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

Flight Software - 75%

• Upgrade existing flight software for new missions.
• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for customer satellite platforms.
• Develop in-house tools to analyze flight software performance and assess its compatibility with new mission and conops.
• Develop and execute flight software tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level.
• Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environment and eventual flight hardware.
• Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing flight software.

Systems Modeling - 15%

• Contribute to the development of systems- and mission-level modeling and simulation tools.
• Develop software models of payloads for ground testing.
• Support development of software model of satellite platform, particularly ensuring accurate representation of the flight software.

Additional Responsibilities - 10%

• Support working groups, both internal and with customers and/or vendors.
• Support proposal writing, new business
• Assess the software impacts of new hardware, conops, and missions.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.
• Preferred: Masters in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.

Experience:

• A minimum of 8 years with a bachelor's degree, or 6 years with a master's degree.
• Proven track-record of working with aerospace hardware and/or software systems, starting from conceptual designs and tradeoffs through detailed design, development, manufacture, integration, test, deployment, and operations.

Skills:

• Insatiable curiosity and a demonstrated ability to learn and work independently.
• Proficiency in C/C++
• Expertise in one or more of the following:
• Embedded software development.
• Device driver development and software/hardware interfaces.
• Real-time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing.
• Cybersecurity.
• GNC algorithms design, analysis, testing, and implementation.
• Functional validation of embedded software on hardware.
• Software safety assurance.
• Network topology and configuration.
• Simulators: numerical, emulator, and hardware in the loop.
• Software requirements and configuration management.
• US Citizenship is required 

Red Canyon Engineering and Software:

“Exploring Other Planets, Improving our Own”

Red Canyon contracts with NASA, NOAA, NREL, JPL, and DOD, in addition to customers such as Lockheed Martin Space, Raytheon, Sierra Space, a.i. solutions, Walt Disney Imagineering, SAIC, Sidus Space, Ball Aerospace, SpaceX, Honeywell, KBRwyle, Peraton, LASP, Maxar, Blue Origin, and Moog. We specialize in building spacecraft, developing renewable energy technologies to help make our planet a better world and cutting edge research and development. Our disciplines include embedded flight software, software testing, GN&C, systems engineering, mechanical design, structural analysis, real time flight and ground software, simulation software, user interface software, and mission management software. We help our contractors with the full life cycle of product development from requirements to test and delivery.

Some of the programs we have previously or currently worked on include: Human Lander System, Artemis I-II, WorldView Legion V, Perseverance Rover, InSight, GeoXO, Tranche-1, LizzieSat, Dream Chaser, Psyche, Mars 98, Odyssey 01, Stardust, Genesis and Deep Impact, Mars Phoenix, Joint Polar Satellite System, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Orion, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, GOES-R, OSIRIS-REx, Maven, JUNO, Grail, and the MarsFlight and LunarSIM Simulation.

Red Canyon’s home office is located in scenic Denver, Colorado, and our regional office, Launch Now, is in historic downtown Titusville, Florida. We are a small company that maintains a flat organization to decrease our overhead and costs to our customers. Our number one focus is to solve some of the most complicated engineering problems humankind is facing.

Does it sound like you want to join our mission?

Compensation: USD 60 – 100 per hour wage